In Magic: The Gathering, your graveyard is just as much a resource as your hand, mana, and life. For newcomers, it can seem like a tragedy when something goes there, but for a seasoned veteran, it’s an unmissable chance to do something spicy.
Though there are lots of graveyard-centric mechanics, one classic one is threshold. Whether you’re playing an old format or enjoying a Bloomburrow draft, knowing how threshold works could be the key to you winning.
What Is Threshold?
Threshold is an ability that gives a card additional effects if there are at least seven cards in your graveyard. The effects differ from card to card, and could mean additional tokens or a meaty stat boost, but they all need at least seven cards in the graveyard.
Threshold was originally a keyword that had its rules baked directly into it. Now that it’s an ability word, cards outright specify how they work instead of ‘threshold’ having an inherent meaning.
At first, this sounds like it should be simple, and for the most part it is. For instance, Centaur Chieftain gets +1/+1 and trample as long as there are seven or more cards in your graveyard, while Excavating Anurid gets +1/+1 and vigilance.
However, it can get complicated, as threshold checked at different times depending on the type of spell you cast.
If it’s a permanent, like a creature, artifact, land, or enchantment, you’ll always need to track the number of cards in your graveyard. If you somehow lose cards from your graveyard, such as through reanimation or exile, you could find your permanents’ threshold abilities will immediately turn off until you meet the condition again.
Instants, sorcery, and activated or triggered abilities check if the condition has been met as part of its resolution. This means that, even if you have seven cards in your graveyard when you first cast the spell, if you lose cards from your graveyard before it has resolved on the stack, like through paying escape costs or a well-timed Tormod’s Crypt, you could fail to meet the threshold by the time it resolves.
Instants and sorceries don’t go until the graveyard until the final step of resolving, so they won’t count itself in your graveyard for threshold.
How To Use Threshold
In general, threshold isn’t one of Magic’s strongest mechanics, with most of the benefits you get from having a large graveyard being fairly minor. That being said, extra value is extra value, and with threshold appearing in sets like Modern Horizons and Bloomburrow, the effect is getting stronger and stronger over time.
Graveyard and midrange decks are going to benefit most from threshold, as they’re the two that will be throwing the most cards there. Self-mill, sacrifice, and discard strategies work especially well for filling up your graveyard.
However, graveyard-centric decks will likely have other plans that eat into threshold, like reanimation, escape, or flashback. This is why midrange decks benefit the most from threshold, as they tend to amass large graveyards, but don’t also necessarily need to do anything with them.
Threshold isn’t going to be the defining feature of your deck. Instead, include a few powerful ones that work well with incidental graveyard growth and enjoy the extra value, as, in general, chasing threshold won’t be worth the effort.
The Best Threshold Cards
As mentioned, threshold isn’t the strongest mechanic printed, and needs you to jump through a lot of hoops before it offers anything. However, there are cards that use the mechanic that you should consider for your decks.
Cabal Ritual is by far the best card with threshold, offering you a net profit of three mana. That mana could then be used to play a Stitch Together, which can return a creature card straight to the battlefield – even if doing so would take you back under seven cards.
Far Wanderings and Krosan Restorer are both excellent green cards for ramp, as the first puts three basic lands onto the battlefield tapped, while the Restorer can then tap to untap three lands. Black and green are usually the go-to graveyard deck colours, making all four of these essential if you’re wanting to play with threshold.
While white has the infamy of having Nomad Stadium, one of the worst lands ever printed, it makes up for it with cards like Cleansing Meditation that can work as a one-sided enchantment boardwipe. Though it’s both green and white, Hunting Grounds is an incredible way to cheat creatures into play for free, especially in a multiplayer format like Commander.
Red’s best threshold card is a controversial one, as Epicenter can force every player to sacrifice all their lands. If you want something a bit less game-breaking, Demoralize can open you up for a win by preventing any creature from blocking.
Blue is often left out of threshold, thanks to how easily it can self-mill. Aboshan’s Desire can give something shroud for just one blue mana, but otherwise there isn’t a whole lot there to use.
